European
Society for Soil Conservation

Workshop
onLong-term effects of
land-use on soil erosion in a historical perspective: European comparisons

15-17
September 2000
University of Oxford, UK

Organisers:
John Boardman (Oxford) and
David Favis-Mortlock (Queen’s, Belfast)

Programme
and Abstracts

INTRODUCTION

This
workshop is the third in a series organised by the ESSC
Task Force on Long-term effects of land-use on soil erosion in a historical
perspective, and follows successful meetings in Müncheberg (September
1998) and Bonn (October 1999). The purpose of the workshop is to review current
work on past land use and erosion in Europe, and to plan a future collaborative
project provisionally titled Long-term soil erosion and soil conservation
along the European ring.

Sunday
17th September

Field trip to the White
Horse area, Berkshire Downs (led by Tom Evans, Oxford). We will aim
to return to Oxford by 1.30 pm. Packed lunches are provided.

ABSTRACTS

Investigating
past soil erosion: some questions and challenges

John
Boardman

University
of Oxford, UK

The
reconstruction of past erosional patterns and events poses peculiar difficulties
— as in other parts of the geological record the evidence is fragmentary,
indeed the most interesting parts may be missing! Thus we must rely on an
interpretation of extant paleo-landforms and deposits using the principle
that the present is the key to the past.

In
the last 30 years geomorphology has made significant advances in understanding
many erosional processes such as crusting, ephemeral gullying and tillage
erosion. Conceptual advances with respect to thresholds, feedbacks, spatial
and temporal scale are also relevant. Allied to this, major developments in
dating, modelling and the interplay between climate and land-use change have
taken place. But still important challenges remain, for example:

1.The present is an inadequate key to the past. Present day landscapes
are often quite different from those of the past and scientific approaches
to monitoring cover a very short period — therefore, by definition, the observed
record is deficient in extreme events.

2.Past landscapes are inadequately known and inadequately dated. Most
of our information is from very limited areas - an archaeological dig or a
soil profile. There is therefore a question of representativeness.

3.Modelling offers an obvious way forward but is still crude and limited
although the level of its technical sophistication may have us believe otherwise!

Significant
advances will come from a combination of approaches and co-operative efforts:
geomorphology, archaeology, anthropology and soil science working together
to better understand and explain the partial record of the past.

Effect
of heavy downpours on forms and sediments

Leszek
Starkel

Polish
Academy of Sciences, Cracow, Poland

The
effects of short-lasting heavy downpours differ from the effects of continuous
rains or snowmeltings. These are especially spectacular on the bare and steep
slopes and show a great variety depending on the lithology of substratum.

The
observations of particular events during last years and decades made in Southern
Poland are very instructive. On the loessic plateaus and similar substratum
the overland flow evoke the rill erosion and shallow soil flows and is frequently
combined with piping and gully erosion as well as with aggradation in the
first or second order valleys (combined deluvial, proluvial and colluvial
deposition). On the steeper deforested slopes with shallow regolith are developing
shallow earth flows or in the cryonival beltdebris flows. In the carstic areas
may be observed reactivated carstic springs and deposition of coarser fractions
combined with erosional transformation of valley floors.

In
the case of downpours superimposed on the saturated substratum (after continuous
rain or snowmelt period) the scale of debris flows formation, gullying and
piping is much more intensive and extended.

In
the sediments inherited from the Holocene may be recognised the effects of
heavy downpours. Among them are proluvial and deluvial deposits up to several
metres thick at the foot of slopes recorded from various foothill regions
and loess plateaus. There are also gully systems mentioned in various sources
and presented on the old maps. Especially valuable are the sequences of alluvial
(proluvial) fans in which may be preserved the layers related to particular
heavy downpour events.

In
overbank deposits of second-third order streams such as extreme events are
represented by the layers or lenses of coarser material with organic detritus.
The surfaces of older debris flows in the high mountains are dated by lichenometric
method and the coarser deposits in sequences of lake sediments correlate with
them.

Only
the application of actualistic approach can help to differentiate the recognition
of geomorphic and sedimentological effects of heavy downpours from other meteorological
events.

Reflection
of Neolithic and Early Mediaeval soil erosion in the alluvia of the Opava
and Osobloga rivers, northeastern foreland of the Sudety Mountains

Kazimierz
Klimek

University
of Silesia, Sosnowiec, Poland

Eastern
part of the Sudety Mountains takes shape of a mid-mountain massif (600 - 1400
m) made up of Palaeozoic gneiss and Devonian to Carboniferous greywackes and
sandstone. During the cold periods of the Quaternary mountain slopes and valley
sides were mantled by regoliths. The NE foreland of the Sudety Mountains (260-
320 m) is filled with heterogenous Quaternary deposits covered with a layer
of loess deposited during the last Scandinavian glaciation. The Opava and
Osoblaha/Osobloga rivers, tributaries of the upper Oder River are characterised
by a high flood dynamics caused by both high precipitation in their headwater
area and steep gradient in the upper valley sections.

Early
farmers and breeders entered in the area from the Pannonian/Dabube Basin via
the Moravian Gap beginning around 5400 - 5300 BC and are now known as the
Linear Pottery culture. They settled mainly on the loess soils in the foreland
of the Sudetes. That was the time of the first forest clearing and the beginning
of man-induced soil erosion. Neolithic cultures that followed, until the Roman
influences, kept stimulating soil erosion on the undulated loess plateau,
thus leading to accumulation of alluvia in the main valley floors. Following
a period of de-colonisation caused by a pause in tribal migration the area
saw the beginning of an influx of Slavs. There are numerous archaeological
sites that document this period and tribal castles in the area date as far
back as to the 7th century. The second phase of the agricultural
colonisation of the northeast foreland of the Eastern Sudetes began under
the Greater Moravian State and was continued when the Opole Duchy replaced
the former in 12th century. This, again, is documented by numerous
settlements, later to become towns, cited to exist in the area since 11th
and 12th centuries.

During
that period, low yields from cultivated crops resulted in a situation whereby
one family usually farmed one feud of land i.e. 15 - 30 ha. This led to overcultivation
and forest clearing to gain more of fertile soil. As the result, runoff of
rainwater and snowmelt water increased soil erosion. Population density of
30 persons per square kilometre on the loess-covered Glubczyce Plateau during
the first half of 14th century illustrates the intensity of agricultural
cultivation. Eroded material was deposited mainly within the footslopes or
filled the secondary headwater valley floors; a portion was transported downstream
and deposited in the main valley floors. Here, the development of the natural
levees caused the origin of the backswamps in the middle course of the Opava
and Osoblaha/Osobloga river valleys. These depressions are now filled up with
non-carbonate silt of 0.05 - 0.002 mm with a significant content of clay <
0.002 mm (up to 30%). This indicates that the loess cover was the main source
of these deposits. In the lower course of the Osoblaha/Osobloga valley, where
vertical erosion prevailed, close to the present-day channel course, there
are younger generations of fossil paleomeanders with organic infills, overlaid
with 2 - 3 m thick silty overbank deposits. The oldest of these fossil organic
intercalation is dated back to 1120±30 years BP, which would indicate that
the overbank sedimentation was running faster during the early Middle Ages.

Large-scale, time-integrated erosion rates in Europe from cosmogenic
nuclides in river sediments

Traditional
estimates of large-scale, continental erosion rates are based upon measurements
of solid and dissolved loads of rivers [1]. This method requires long-term
(at least several decades), frequent (preferably daily) measurements, to account
for temporal variability of water discharge and sediment transport. Even where
these requirements are met, erosion rate estimates are not necessarily robust,
because 1) they may not have captured rare, high-magnitude flood events, and
2) sediment transport rates may have been affected by river engineering works.

We
have determined large-scale, continental erosion rates, using the concentration
of the rare cosmogenic nuclide 10Be in quartz from the bedload
of rivers. This technique exploits the continuous bombardment of the Earth's
surface by cosmic rays which induce nuclear reactions in the upper meter of
rocks. Nuclide concentration in the shallow subsurface is controlled by the
surface erosion rate. It can be demonstrated that river sands contain a cosmogenic
nuclide inventory that reflects the ensemble of erosion events distributed
across a catchment. Assuming steady state erosion and nuclide production,
the catchment-wide erosion rate, averaging over the time it takes to erode
a layer of the uppermost 60cm (several kys) can be determined from a sample
of well-mixed sand [2, 3].

We
have tested this approach in four medium sized (103-104
km2) rivers draining the middle European uplands. The four test
catchments are the Regen (SE Germany, crystalline bedrock), the Loire and
Allier (France, crystalline bedrock), the Neckar (SW Germany, Mesozoic Sediments),
and the Meuse (NE France, Belgium, Netherlands, Mesozoic sediments and Palaeozoic
shists). Erosion rates were estimated from cosmogenic nuclide concentrations
in river quartz, using the formalism developed by Lal [4]. Production rates
have been scaled to the mean altitude of the upstream area of individual sampling
locations. These estimates were compared with erosion rates calculated from
suspended and dissolved loads measured during the last 30 years.

RIVER

RIVER LOAD

COSMOGENIC

Regen

7 mm/kyr (20 T/km2/yr)

35-45 mm/ka (100 T/km2/yr)

Loire/Allier

5-10 mm/kyr (20 T/km2/yr)

20-90 mm/ka (150 T/km2/yr)

Neckar

25-30 mm/kyr (75 T/km2/yr)

70-170 mm/ka (300 T/km2/yr)

Meuse

15-25 mm/kyr (55 T/km2/yr)

25-50 mm/ka (100 T/km2/yr)

There
is good first-order agreement between river load-based and cosmogenic erosion
rate estimates. However, close comparison between the methods shows that the
river load-based rates are always 2-5 times lower than the cosmogenic rates.
This difference may have at least three causes. First, the suspended loads
do not necessarily include rare, high-magnitude events, such as centennial
or millennial floods, which possibly carry the bulk of the sediment. In contrast,
cosmogenic rates integrate over several kiloyears (5-10kyr Neckar; 10-30kyr
Loire, 20-30kyr Regen, Meuse) and thus capture the full range of event magnitudes.
Second, the steady-state assumption of homogeneous downwearing is violated
by linear dissection processes such as rilling and gullying. Third, and most
important, the cosmogenic rates carry a "memory" of past erosion
rates that prevailed during the last cold period in Middle Europe. The latter
possibility can be evaluated by application of the same approach to terrace
deposits of the last climate cycle.

Observed
spatial uniformity of erosion rates within catchments shows that the cosmogenic
technique has considerable potential for the estimation of time-integrated
denudation rates. Moreover, it might allow estimation of natural soil erosion
(time-averaged cosmogenic erosion rates) vs. soil erosion induced by man (short-term
rates from river gauging and estimates of historic soil erosion events), and
could facilitate an evaluation of the effects of man, climate and climate
change on continental erosion.

Questions
of abiding interest in the Mediterranean world are the timing and causes of
periods of soil erosion and aggradation. This paper is based on geoarchaeological
field work over the last four years around and in Alanya and Kinet Höyük on
Turkey's southern Mediterranean coast. Both regions have watersheds that rise
in the Taurus or Ammanus Mountains and run through foothills and fans onto
alluvial coastal plains. A legion of little-known environmental dynamics such
as seismicity, climatic changes, sea-level changes, and millennia of human
impacts complicate these landscapes. To investigate these complications we
dated and characterized sediments, soil formation, and alluvial history, and
correlated these with the regions’ environmental and archaeological records.
We studied cutbank sediment sequences and paleosols across these watersheds’
valleys. In the watershed of the Ammanus Mountains, we found four salient
paleosols that date from the Early Bronze Age, the Late Bronze Age, the Roman
period, and the Ottoman Period. But there is greater diversity in the Taurus
Mountains’ watershed. The presence of regional paleosols and their intervening
episodes of sedimentation suggest possible periods of erosion and sedimentation.
But despite the long human history of these regions the greatest changes have
occurred in modern times. We are also studying the elemental chemistry of
regional sediments and soils which will provide other sources of information
for environmental change and past land uses. we will compare our field studies
at these sites with previous and concurrent studies in the eastern Mediterranean
to analyze earlier models of erosion & sedimentation hist across this
whole region

Badland
Development and Land Mismanagement in Tuscany (Italy)

C.
Calzolari1, G. Galardi2, L. Rombai2 and D.
Torri1

1CNR-IGES,
Firenze, Italy

2Dipartimento
di Studi Storici e Geografici, Firenze, Italy

Part
of Tuscany (Italy) is characterised by Plio-Pleistocenic marine sediment outcrops
that are generally overconsolidated but scarcely cemented, hence fairly erodible.
The study area (podere Baccanello – podere=farm unit) is located
in the valley of the river Orcia, Southeast Tuscany. The area of Baccanello
and the surrounding sites are positioned over silty clay deposits, heavily
dissected by badlands (biancana fields, Calzolari and Ungaro, 1998), now interspersed
between land-levelled fields.

A
thorough study of the spatial distribution of soil types within the biancana
field surrounding the hill where the buildings of the podere Baccanello are
located, showed that the better developed soils (Vertisols) are located on
the top of small hills and on tallest biancana domes. Some spots of these
soils are also found on the upper parts of presently cultivated slopes. The
morphological position of these soils, together with the measured erosion
rates (Torri and Bryan, 1998) indicate that the erosion events that lead to
the badland formation must belong to a recent past.

The
fortunate recovery of a cabreo (painting) dated 1837, which very precisely
depicts the land use and some morphological features of the area, permitted
us to verify the hypothesis on biancana field evolution and to start a research
on the effects of past land (mis)management on soil erosion and landscape
evolution. The research continued with an inquiry through documents preserved
in the Italian State Archives, mainly in Florence.

The
collected data describes two periods of major erosion which brought to the
formation of biancana fields extended over some hundreds hectares. The first
event took place during the eighteenth century and the second a century later.
Both the events caused localised erosion of about 10m in some years (certainly
less than 20). At present, erosion rates cannot be precisely determined nor
the direct causative type of storm (or sequence of storms) due to still missing
documents.

The
evidences bring to the conclusion that the most important factor causing the
badland formation was in both cases linked to mismanagement. Particularly,
the documents relative to the first case were found as acts of the Florence
Court. The Baccanello landlord invoked the Court in order to rescind the contract
with which the Baccanello farm was rented. The allegation was that the tenant
was mistreating the soil and causing farm degradation. The second case was
just after a change in land use (recorded in the cabreo) from pasture
to arable, that exposed some further hectares to intense erosion.

The
(pre-)history of erosion in the Mediterranean Basin

John
Wainwright

King's
College, London, UK

The
human factor in gully development in Meerdal Forest, central Belgium

Tom
Vanwelleghem, E. Vermaut, L. Umans, J. Deckers and J. Poesen

Katholieke
Universiteit Leuven, Belgium

The
Gaugracht — a contribution to the erosional history of the lower Saar valley
(Germany) since the Roman period

Birgit
Kausch1, Roland Baumhauer1, Hartwig Löhr2
and Brigitta Schütt1

1University
of Trier, Germany

2Rheinisches
Landesmuseum, Trier, Germany

The
Gaugracht is a gully with a partial wooded watershed in the lower Saar valley.
The area totals about 2 km². Bedrock consists of mesozoic sediments covered
by slope debris.

As
cross profiles of the Gaugracht show there are several — minimum two — gully
generations nested. In consequence of the youngest incision, which took place
approximately during late Middle Ages, an alluvial fan has been formed at
its base level. While most recently gullying processes in the watershed are
of minor importance, the medieval alluvial fan was incised by a 3 m deep insection
in the youngest past, yielding good profile conditions. At the mouth of the
eroded indentation a younger small alluvial fan is building up today.

Utilisation of the area in earlier times can be proved by the "Altes
Lager" (presumably a fortified roman estate of smaller dimension), grave-findings
(early roman times) and the preservation of today wooded field terraces of
high-medieval times in the headwater area of the watershed and its surroundings.

Investigations
were made on various landform parameters by morphometry. The sediments of
the alluvial fan were analysed on physical parameters and geochemically on
main and trace elements in order to get information on the degree of environmental
change and soil erosion in the drainage basin area of the Gaugracht in the
past. Additionally, some of the adjacent sediments will be analyzed for the
inclosed mollusc-association.

Long-term
effects of land use on soil erosion in a historical perspective: current investigations
in Germany

Markus
Dotterweich, Gabriele Schmidtchen and Hans-Rudolf Bork

Christian-Albrechts-Universität
zu Kiel, Germany

This
paper will show the current projects of our working group about long-term
effects of land use on soil erosion in a historical perspective in Germany.

This
year we are investigating areas in northern Bavaria, Brandenburg, Schleswig-Holstein
and in Lower Saxony. The research aim is to quantify soil losses caused by
soil erosion due to intensive land use and heavy rainfalls. The investigation
sites are slopes and gully-systems with their sediment traps and colluvial
fans. The time scale of soil losses range from Iron Age until today. Here
we will present new results from our research.

Hierarchy
of the Holocene hydrological rhythmicity on the East-European Plain

Andrey
Panin

Moscow
State University, Russia

In
a wide geographical context erosion is a part of continental hydrological
cycle. Changes of amount of surface flow that makes extrinsic control over
erosion process, may be documented from functioning of river systems. Some
examples of such changes have been found on the East-European Plain.

1.
The Holocene hydrological cycle. The Holocene variations of river discharges
are fixed in the size of palaeochannels preserved on river floodplains. Absolute
dating of palaeochannels in a number of key sites reveals the general tendency
of river runoff change: decline during the first half of the Holocene and
subsequent rise in the late Holocene. Changes are not synchronous: in the
north of the East-European Plain the lowest runoff is estimated in early Atlantic
(6-8 ka BP), in the central part — in the late Atlantic (5-6,5 ka BP); no
data exist for the southern regions. The late Sub-Atlantic is marked by growth
of river channel size all over the territory.

2.
Rise of peak discharges during the last millennium. Characteristic
for river floodplains in the centre and south of the East-European Plain is
distinct buried soil dated at 0,8 - 2,4 ka BP by 14C and archaeological methods.
It is indicative of interrupt or at least of rare flooding. The soil is covered
by up to 1-1,5 m thick laminated sediment with artefacts and organic matter
dated at less than 1 ka BP. So, the Sub-Atlantic demonstrates a 2000-year
climatic rhythm (“Shnitnikov cycle”) with the last millennium being its most
humid part.

3.
The last 2-2,5 centuries. Examination of old maps reveals a specific
phenomenon - disappearance of small rivers. River sources shift downstream
and upper stretches of river systems become dry valleys (“balkas”). Compared
to the end of the XVIII century, river systems in semi-arid regions (steppes
and forested steppes) have lost up to 50-60% of their total length. River
disappearance was most rapid at the end of XVIII - first half of the XIX century
and had stopped by the beginning - middle of the XX century. This phenomenon
probably demonstrates evolution of humidity at the end and after Little Ice
Age. It did not take place in humid regions (forest zone), that is why it
is not known in Western Europe.

Intrinsic
landscape control hinders clear coincidence between magnitude of erosion and
hydrological rhythmicity. Nevertheless, the latter may serve, at least as
a time scale, for inter-regional (long-distance) correlation of erosion history.

Archaeological
studies of the timescales of erosion

Martin
Bell

University
of Reading, UK

This
paper will evaluate the contribution which archaeology can make to a better
understanding of the chronology of long-term soil erosion and the environmental
and social context within which erosion occurred. The precision of a range
of forms of archaeological and historical dating is considered. The most useful
sequences will be obtained where there is detailed regional survey and a good
existing knowledge of pottery fabrics, settlement and land-use history. Dendrochronology
offers much greater chronological precision highlighting the potential for
work at the colluvial wetland interface. Archaeological studies have tended
to be somewhat site specific, often focusing on individual sections which
makes quantification difficult. A more spatial view needs to be obtained mapping
and quantifying dated sedimentary units in the landscape. There is also a
case for working at a diverse range of spatial scales from individual field
-> slope -> stream catchment -> river system -> estuarine interface.
This point is developed by a comparison of erosion histories in the River
Severn and Severn Estuary which highlights the contribution of dendrochronology
to the development of more precise timescales.

The
paper will also outline some of the main problems which archaeological soil
erosion studies need to address including missing early Holocene woodland
soils and the absence of Neolithic activity on the English chalk, contrasting
perspectives on the date, extent and scale of erosion in the arid landscape
of Almeria, south east Spain, and the problems of dating erosion history in
landscapes which saw intensive prehistoric exploitation on Mallorca and Cyprus.

Future
archaeological studies of soil erosion are likely to be most productive where
they are integrated within interdisciplinary programmes of research using
diverse timescales from present to past. Behind these issues is the question
for discussion: 'to what extent is it possible, perhaps even necessary, to
integrate these archaeological problems and criteria within the developing
agenda for soil erosion studies in Europe and beyond?'

"Where
has this colluvium come from?"
Towards a modelling strategy which aims at an answer

David
Favis-Mortlock1, John Boardman2 and Hans-Rudolf Bork3

1Queen's
University of Belfast, UK

2University
of Oxford, UK

3Christian-Albrechts-Universität
zu Kiel, Germany

In
many areas of science, modelling approaches are widely used. The ability of
models to assist in evaluating competing hypotheses is one of their most compelling
attractions, particularly for situations where experimentation is difficult
or impossible. It might therefore have been expected that models would by
now have become a valuable tool for the study of past erosion. It is frequently
necessary, for example, to weigh the merits of alternative hypotheses regarding
the origin of colluvial sediment and the circumstances in which it was deposited.
This might seem to be an ideal task for a model: yet model-based studies of
past erosion remain a rarity. Why is this?

A
partial answer is the mismatch between the capabilities of current models
for soil erosion by water, and what they would need to be able to provide
in order to be useful in studies of past erosion. As a result of increased
understanding of erosional processes there have been great improvements in
erosion models in recent years. However, there are still major weaknesses.
In particular, current models have problems dealing with the spatial aspects
of erosion, and with gullying.

This
paper focuses on the spatial aspects of erosion models, from the perspective
of their potential usefulness for modelling past erosion. First results are
presented from a version of the WEPP Hillslope model which has been modified
to improve its suitability for studies of past erosion. The paper also discusses
potential strategies for model development within the context of the proposed
ESSC collaborative project.

POSTERS

Historical weathering, erosion and accumulation in agricultural
used area in southeastern Spain

Brigitta Schütt

University
of Trier, Germany

The
focus of the study is the investigation of the varying influence of climate
and man on soil and relief forming processes in the semi-arid dryland zone
of the upper Rio Guadalentin watershed (Prov. Murcia). It is proven whether
the methodological approach gained from investigations of playa-lake-systems,
using chemical characters of sediments as an indicator for the reconstruction
of paleoenvironmental conditions (Schütt, 1998, 1999), can be transferred
to predominantly detrital deposits caused by soil erosion processes. Object
of the investigvation presented is a fan in the Cañada Hermosa, a hummocky
area in the Subbetic zone between Lorca (Prov. Murcia) and Velez
Blanco (Prov. Almeria). Three sedimentcores were taken along a transsect
downslope from the vertex of the fan. For water harvesting effects the whole
fan is terraced.

Laboratory
analysis of the sediments included the detection of sediment structure and
the analysis of chemical composition. Beside trace concentrations especially
element ratios prove to be useful paleonenvironental indicators: distinct
changes in sediment character point to the the initial terracing of the area,
evident by marked changes in sediment’s nutrient concentration due to nutrient
export by harvesting as well as by sediment structure caused by artificial
earth movements.

Checking
first the Mg-Ca-ratio of the sediments it can be concluded, that small Mg-Ca-ratios
are due to relative dry phases with ephemeral rainfall and only short term
ground humidity; the other way around, high Mg-Ca-ratios point to increased
calcium mobilization and, thus, to longer lasting ground humidity, in general,
coinciding with more rainfall and less evapotranspiration. At all, it has
to be emphasized that these processes took place in the terrace environment
after deposition and, thus, the Mg-Ca-ratio is an indicator quite different
to the Si-Al-ratio, which points to the weathering conditions in the drainage
basin environment. Checking the sediment’s Si-Al-ratio it can be concluded
that increasing weathering intensities before and during terracing occured,
while decreasing weathering intensities marked the environmental conditions
during the Modern Times, interrupted by a short phase of moderate weathering
intensities compared to the dry conditions with low weathering intensities
in the most recent past.

Even
still lacking data the sediments lead content gives us an idea about sediments
age and sedimentation rates. So we can conclude preliminarily that the relative
wet conditions in the recent past might correspond to the end of the Little
Ice Age and that terracing took place during the Medieval.

Schütt, B. (1998). Reconstruction of Holocene Paleoenvironments
in the Endorheic Basin of Laguna de Gallocanta, Central Spain by Investigation
of Mineralogical and Geochemical Characters from Lacustrine Sediments. Journal
of Paleolimnology20, 217-234.

Changing
site-characters since Bronze age - the use of geographical information systems
for analysing settlement preferences, a case study from the Bitburger Gutland/Germany

Brigitta
Schütt1, Roland Baumhauer1 and Hartwig Löhr2

1University
of Trier, Germany

2Rheinisches
Landesmuseum, Trier, Germany

The
region of the upper Mosel-valley with Trier as one of the oldest german towns
in its center is because of it long and well documented history an especially
suited region to recognize the changing perception
of nature during history of manhood and to record and to understand the interdependance
between human acting and natural processes in the past. Thus, a statistical
study, linking information on historical and prehistorical findings and natural
character of the site was implemented.

At
the Rheinisches Landesmuseum Trier since World War II all historical
and prehistorical findings are archived, including geographical coordinates,
the kind, and the age of the findings assigned to periods. In this way a data-pool
is available implying more than 25,000 findings all over the area of Trier.

The
county of Bitburg, located in the northern part of the Trier area, is a rural
area with only underdeveloped industrialization. Thus, most recent effects
on landscape by accounts and sealing are relatively few. Accordingly, this
area was selected for an initial statistical analysis combining information
about the findings and natural site properties. Data about site properties
include information on geology, diverse morphometric parameters, and soil
characters like soil type, soil erodibility, and swampy areas. Using a geographical
information system the different layers were linked and, that way, site properties
of the findings were assembled.

In
the following statistical analysis relationships between the kind resp. the
age of the findings to site properties were checked. In doing so, changing
preferences in location of settlements and graves over the history of man
were acquired.